This section provides background information related to the present disclosure which is not necessarily prior art.
Food services facilities often include multiple pieces of commercial kitchen equipment. For example, restaurants, supermarkets, school or dormitory cafeterias, and other facilities that provide food services often include multiple pieces of commercial kitchen equipment used for food preparation. Such kitchen equipment, for example, may include ovens, fryers, stoves, grills, griddles, microwaves, fume hoods, slicers, blenders, drink or shake makers, food processors, mixers, and other equipment used to prepare food.
The kitchen equipment may store a menu of food items that can be prepared with the kitchen equipment. The kitchen equipment may optionally include a user interface for displaying a menu of food items and for receiving input and selections used to operate the kitchen equipment during food preparation. For example, a commercial oven may include a menu with a number of available food items that can be prepared using the oven. For example, the food services facility may be a sandwich restaurant and the oven may include a user interface that displays multiple different sandwiches that can be heated in the oven. The menu may include operating parameters, such as, for example, a cook time and a cook temperature, used by the kitchen equipment for preparing associated food items. By selecting a particular food item for preparation, the kitchen equipment can automatically operate according to the appropriate associated operating parameters. For example, by selecting a particular sandwich for preparation, the oven can automatically be operated with the appropriate cook time and temperature for the selected sandwich. As another example, a fryer may store a menu that includes different food items that can be prepared using the fryer, such as French fries or chicken strips, along with associated cook times and temperatures for the different food items. The fryer may optionally include a user interface displaying the different food items that can be selected for preparation with the fryer, such as French fries or chicken strips. For example, the user interface may display the food items with text, icons, graphics, or other visual cues. When a particular food item is then selected for preparation, the fryer is operated according to the appropriate corresponding cook time and temperature stored in the menu for the selected food item.
Periodically, as the food services facilities change their menus, the menus for the kitchen equipment may need to be updated. For example, the food items and/or the associated operating parameters for the food items may need to be updated. For kitchen equipment operated with an associated user interface display, the user interface display may also need to be updated. Additionally, periodically the firmware for the kitchen equipment may likewise need to be updated. Traditionally, to perform a menu or firmware update for the kitchen equipment, the updated menu or firmware would be copied to a memory device, such as a USB drive, that would then be used to copy the updated menu or firmware to the kitchen equipment. For example, a user may physically insert the USB drive with files for the updated menu or firmware into a USB interface on the kitchen equipment to copy the updated menu or firmware to the kitchen equipment. Upon the next startup cycle, the kitchen equipment would then install the updated menu or firmware to complete the update.
The use of individual memory devices, such as USB drives, to facilitate menu or firmware updates for kitchen equipment can be costly and logistically difficult, especially for food services companies that have many sites, such as individual restaurants, spread over a large geographic area.